Understanding and Responding to Challenging Behaviour: a Service Provider's Experience

Many services struggle with the dilemma of providing quality residential services to people with learning disability who present behaviours which challenge services. In the last year, one such service in North Yorkshire has begun to develop a more systematic and structured way of approaching this. The introduction of a weekly timetable which incorporates all the service and service user requirements, backed up by training, external professional help and management attention, has seen a decrease in behaviours which challenge, increases in team members' skills and confidence, and increased service user participation both in the house and in the community. This paper describes how this process began and the results for service users, staff and the organisation.